Celebrity Financial Adviser Kenneth Ira Starr Charged With Fraud

May 27, 2010

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The complaint also provides details about other alleged victims. It says that Starr transferred $1 million on April 13 from an account belonging to a client labeled "Investor No. 1" and when the Investor complained, Starr repaid the money with funds from the account of "Investor No. 2," outlining exactly how he allegedly ran his illegal business.

Ninety-year-old Joan A. Stanton, an actress who worked under the name Joan Alexander and is most famous for playing the voice of Lois Lane in the 1940s radio show "The Adventures of Superman," also filed her own lawsuit against Starr on Tuesday in Manhattan's Supreme Court.

In court papers, she accuses Starr of fraud, claiming that he took control of her fortune while advising her and kept her from the advice of others, including her children.

The suit specifies that Starr used Stanton's money, including $70 million her late husband Arthur Stanton left her when he died in 1987, for personal projects that he or his friends controlled instead of the investments she asked, allegedly declaring that the investments failed when his own projects did not return the money.

His actions, according to the court papers, "at times left [Stanton] so cash strapped that he had to take out a line of credit on her behalf to satisfy her tax obligations." For his services, Starr charged Stanton hundreds or thousands of dollars in annual fees.

Starr's lawyer, Peter Parcher, says the lawsuit is without merit and that over the twenty years that Stanton employed Starr "her assets grew considerably."

Stanton is not the first celebrity to sue Mr. Starr. In 2002, Sylvester Stallone filed a lawsuit, claiming that under Starr's advisement he lost $10 million on the stock of Planet Hollywood International, Inc., the company who owns the theme-restaurant chain, claiming that Starr failed to tell him that the company was going bankrupt. Stallone also accused Starr of having a conflict of interest since his colleague, Barish, was a board member and large shareholder of Planet Hollywood. The suit was eventually settled.

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